While mandarins with silver pens take pegs in shadowed halls of grace,
They chart the tides of changing men, to mask the nation’s native face.
They twirl their ice with practised hand, while charters curl upon the pyre,
And smile as oath and birthright fall, consumed in quiet civil fire.
The Commons’ folk, once held in trust, now serve the crownless, coin-bound scheme,
No more as kin, but counted flesh, mere ballast for the Party’s dream.
The vault once locked by ancient code is cracked with fingers smooth and pale;
The purse of work, the well of thrift, is drained beneath the stateman’s veil.
Your banking code, your hearth-earned pay, repurposed for their gilded plans;
No jury sits, no judge is stirred, just digits bound in unseen hands.
A parked estate, a misspent coin, a letter wrong, a curfew missed,
They've shaped the law into a blade, not brace for liberty’s closed fist.
The visor'd helm now grips the rein, it sees by day, it dreams by night;
It hears the cough behind the door, it scrolls your fears by satellite.
The knock will fall not for the thief, but for the one who looked awry,
Whose pen transgressed the shifting line, whose brow refused the lowered eye.
A borrowed book, a jest too bold, a whisper out of rhythm’s song,
The chain is clasped with language sweet, and justice turned to tyrant's thong.
They call it care, this velvet yoke, this leash of gold on silent throat,
They dress it fine in silken words and float it on the bloated vote.
But every law that lacks a name shall one day bind the speaker’s breath,
And every statute left unclear becomes a snare more sharp than death.
The guest within his father’s house now sleeps beneath the stranger’s creed,
And finds the plate once stamped with pride now bearing signs he cannot read.
For liberty, that ancient flame, is banked beneath the steward’s cup,
And those who dare to lift the flag must never dare to hold it up.
The chains are shaped from care and coin, from technocrats and crafted lies,
Where once was oath and sword and song, now silence spreads beneath the skies.
They bid him nod, they mark his head, they teach his voice to hum in shame,
And say: “You nodded once, old man, your guilt is writ beneath your name.”
Yet still there walks in hedgerow shade, in whispering lanes by broken stone,
A quiet kin of vanished blood, who keeps the songs he learned alone.
And when the pegs are poured no more, when steel returns to voice and brow,
He'll raise again the standard lost, and take back what was silent now.
For Whitehall’s night, though velvet-robed, must yield to Albion’s morning light,
And chota pegs shall ring no more, when hearts arise to speak and fight.
(By John Shenton)